The Authors Guild is pressing the Supreme Court to review a decision that cleared Google of copyright infringement for digitizing books without the copyright owner's permission. Last October, the 2nd Circuit ruled that Google's digitization efforts were transformative and a fair use. The Authors Guild is now asking the Supreme Court to review that decision. Google argues that the 2nd Circuit correctly ruled that digitizing books and displaying brief excerpts in its search engine is protected by fair use principles and also argues that "Petitioners have not -- in nearly a decade of litigation -- introduced evidence of a single lost sale attributable to Google Books." For more about this case, read Authors Guild Presses Supreme Court To Hear Appeal Over Google Books.
The 2nd Circuit is set to review a dispute between Fox News and the media monitoring service, TVEyes, where the mass collection and sharing of unlimited TV clips has come up. A district judge's opinion in September of 2014 held that TVEyes makes fair use of Fox's material by indexing its news clips and providing snippets of them to subscribers. But the following August, the judge ruled that other components of TVEyes' service -- including functions enabling subscribers to download clips for offline viewing, email clips to others, and to search programs by date and time -- are not protected by fair use. To read more about this case, read TVEyes Battles Fox News Over Downloads, Asks Appeals Court To Nix Injunction.
For a summary of other cases presenting important entertainment and media issues that have the potential to be reviewed by the Supreme Court within the next couple of years, read Supreme Court: 8 Potential Cases That Would Impact Entertainment and Media.
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